"In the beginning was the Word" ~Gospel of John
"Adau Bhagavan shabdha rasahi: In the beginning the Lord
manifested the universe through a stream of sound" ~Vedic text
Here's a story of my pathless youth. This is about how I learned the science of mantra from a Nigerian bumboat man, which is the most wonderful science of all, because it's how the universe is created.
Not sure that would ever have made sense to me if I had not managed to get my Seaman's Papers and worked on an American merchant marine freighter to Africa. I sort of needed
to transcend the Ivy League for awhile, even though I was still in college.
We sailed up and down the coast of West Africa. Seven countries, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Guinea. I have to explain that there are only three things to do when you are a U.S. merchant marine sailor ashore: one is get drunk, one is get into a fight, and one involves women of the night. I was a novice at most of these. But I must say, the ports of New York and
Baltimore were rougher and scarier than any city where I caroused in Africa.
The port of Lagos Nigeria is huge, built around a bay, where the ships anchor far offshore and you take a launch to the city. What I didn't know is that Nigeria was in the middle of a war: "the Ibo War." The fighting was deep in the interior, but once somebody had actually flown a bi-plane over the city to drop a Molotov cocktail, gasoline in a glass bottle. So now they had a curfew every night to protect them from the "Ibo tribal air force." I mean, they told me all this at a bar, sort of joking about it, so I didn't take the curfew seriously.
I played sailor all evening, until the lights went out. It was about that time that a very drunk Brazilian sailor accused me of stealing his wallet and pulled a knife on me. Fortunately, Nigerian policemen pulled up in the dark street in front of the bar and threw us both in the back of their van, to drive us to the ferry dock. I said, "Wait, you can't throw me in the back of the van with this guy, he's got a knife and he wants to kill me!" The policeman said, "Yes we can." But by the time we were in the van, the Brazilian had forgotten why he wanted to kill me. Instead, he hugged me and said we were friends forever.
The cops dumped us at the dock and there was no light on anywhere. All over the city, all over the bay, pitch dark. The ships at anchor were lightless too, small shadows drifting on a big shadow, surrounded by shadow-gray night. Somewhere there was a moon, behind the clouds. No stars.
The office at the dock was closed. "Christ," I said. "This is for real." No ferries, no traffic in the streets, no people, no light. I asked the policemen, "Are you just going to leave us here?"
"But there's no way to get out to my ship. What am I supposed to do?"
"Your problem," the cop said. But as they drove away, he shouted, "Try the bumboats."
I had no idea what this meant. The Brazilian sailor had wandered off into the dark. I banged on the chained door to the ferry office. Nobody. Blackness inside and out. I walked down the rickety stairs to the sand beneath the dock. It was creepy, lapping waves, garbage, feces along the shore. Tangled jungle about twenty yards back from the water, animals up there scrounging and yelping.
For about fifty yards I walked along the beach, looking for my ship out in the bay, then glancing behind me into the shadows. Pretty sure I knew which ship was mine, a bulkier darkness in the dark, about 3/4 of a mile out. But what the hell was a bum boat?
"So this is being twenty one," I thought. I had always wondered where I'd be when I was twenty one. Then I called out, "Bum boat?" My voice sounded like a chirp in the vacuum. I cleared my throat and yelled louder, "Bum boat?"
Somebody shouted back from the dark trees. I squinted. There was a hut. Actually, probably several huts. A bony figure tumbled out of the dark and shambled down to the water. "Bum boat?" I said again.
"Yo bum boat," he nodded, with flashing teeth. He was all skin and bones, but his smile was brilliant, and his eyes were shining somehow in the blackness.
I pointed out to my ship in the distance and he said, "Bum boat two dollar."
"OK!" I said, and gave him two dollars. I sort of regarded him as my savior right then and there. And American dollars were like gold back then. Now they aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
He ran back into the shadows. A dog barked. I waited. Then a hollowed log about eight feet long and two feet wide slid out of the darkness, the barefoot man chasing after it. He beckoned me to get in. I sat in the bow, if you could call it a bow, and he pushed out into the bay, perched in the stern with his paddle.
Before I knew it we were bobbing in the waves, the shore spreading behind us like a dark stain, the invisible city a shadow behind that. It turned out these Nigerians were serious about their curfew. Not a sound or a flicker of light through the vastness. Not a single lantern on any of the ships. Just paddle sounds in the night, and waves slapping a log.
I sat back and witnessed the moment, to gain some situational awareness. I trusted the guy. I half trusted his log. I was pretty sure I knew which ship was my freighter, and I knew the ladder would still be down for tomorrow's ferry. All in all, not bad. On the other hand, one wack with the oar and I would be fish bait, my wallet in his hand. Or if this thin tipsy dug-out got broadsided by a wave, we would be swimming hundreds of yards from shore in the middle of Lagos bay, where no boats were moving.
Here's what I thought about. No one in the world except the bumboat man knew where I was - no one in the city of Lagos, no one on my ship, no one at home in America. I could very easily disappear from the face of the earth, and no one would ever find out where. For some reason, this brought a very relaxing sensation, and I felt free. The perfect craziness of the inevitable dawned, the wayless beauty of the Absurd, and some causeless joy beyond choice arose in my chest, deeper than laughter and far more blissful.
For no reason at all I leaned back and spread my arms, as if I was hugging the waves and the bumboat, hugging the man and the city behind him, the invisible stars, the vast gray uncertainty of Being. With all my heart, I started singing, chanting really loud, "La la la la la!" Just that. I bellowed, "La la la la la la la!" Laughed and roared, "La la la la la la la." Like a fearless goofball moon-drunk baby.
The bumboat man grinned and swung his head around in circles, davening and Zikhring with delight. He too chanted, "La La La La La Lah Lah!" Then he said, "God name, God name! We sing God like that!"
It was the name of Allah we were singing. And it filled us with power, charging our bodies, the boat, the waves with power, the clouds and the stars with power, with the power of the name of God, the energy of the mantra, the Word that created the cosmos. Yet at the same time, our sacred hymn was merely the song of a fool, the song of children lost and found at sea who trust one another in the dark.
* Photo, my ship, the African Neptune, now moth-balled and melted down for scrap metal.
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